


We Mortal Few

by LilyChenAppreciationSociety



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Disabled Character, Discussions of Immortality, Future Fic, Gen, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7170149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyChenAppreciationSociety/pseuds/LilyChenAppreciationSociety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rafe has something to talk to Alec about. </p>
<p>Every generation has to make their choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Mortal Few

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at http://marcythewerewolf.tumblr.com/post/144923001339/okay-i-got-a-definitely-from-someone-i-trust

Alec was sitting on the patio, stretching his legs and watching the New York skyline, when he heard a heavy footstep behind him and felt a tap on his shoulder

“Dad.” Rafael said, and then signed, “I need to talk to you about something.”

Alec was aware of the wrinkles on his face when he smiled and of Rafael’s adulthood, but he didn’t care. It felt like the old days. Years of speech therapy had helped Rafael quite a bit, but he was still more comfortable with sign language for important conversations.

“Sure.” Alec signed back. He knew Rafe would understand him if he spoke it, but it made it more even, having them both speak the same language.

Rafe sat next to him, and smoothed his shadowhunter black shirt down. He might not have spent time in the field, but the simple dark colours fit Rafael’s tastes. Magnus was always complaining that his perpetually happy child wore such simple clothes, but Alec understood the draw. Ever since Rafael had been old enough to fit into Alec’s hand me downs it had been a mark of closeness between them. The two humans in the family had to stick together.

“Dad.” Rafael repeated, his hands were flapping a little. It was a tick everyone had learned to filter out of Rafe’s signing. But there was something about the usual motion that made Alec suspect something was wrong. “Dad.” Rafe signed for the third time, like a charm. “I want to be immortal.”

Alec reeled back. “Why?” he asked, on automatic. He thought of all his mistakes, the choices he had nearly made. He thought of what he had seen as an adult of immortality, as something workable but something that hurt. Warlocks and vampires left to linger through eternity. It was a gift with thorns.

“Max.” Rafe replied, his smile widening at his brother’s name. “I can’t leave him alone. Do you understand?”

Alec hesitated. He did, he understood every day, looking at Magnus’s perfect face, but that did’t mean it was right and that didn’t mean he wanted to admit it. His stomach was still churning at the idea. 

“Yes.” he said finally. “But it is a big decision.”

He didn’t want to trap his baby, his laughing Rafael, in an eternal life he wasn’t built for. There was no helping it with Max and Magnus. That was how they were made and Alec loved them. But Rafael, Rafael had always been his.

“I know. But I’m not you. You’d want to stay with aunt Izzy, right?” Rafael’s eyes begged for understanding. He was leaning toward Alec in his seat.

“Yes.” Alec admitted. He didn’t know how to put his fears, his automatic negative response into words, much less how to justify it. “But it’s a big choice.”

The smile dropped from Rafe’s face. “Do you not trust me?” he asked, angrily. “Am I not allowed to make my own choices?”

Developmental delays, Catarina had said all those years ago, as she guided them towards Rafael’s room. The speech had improved, his sleep had stabilized, his motor skills had increased, but Rafael still struggled with some things.

Alec couldn’t deny he was his own person though, a Shadowhunter grown, even if he couldn’t fight. He wore runes and studied and practiced with Max.

“No.” Alec signed quickly. “I just-” he stopped to scrub the words out the air and started over. “I thought what you think once. You’ve heard the stories. I acted rashly and I regretted it. I don’t want that for you. Why now?”

“I’m getting older.” Rafe told him, somber. “I’m much older than Max looks now. Everyone can tell. If I want this, I don’t want to wait too long.” The sun was setting on New York, beautiful as it had ever been, even if the flying cars jammed things up a little. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Rafe added. “But I wanted to tell you first and not till I was sure.”

Alec couldn’t help but ask. “Is it because of Ella?”

Ella had been a Shadowhunter, bright and shinning. Not a prodigy but a solid person, kind and unbiased. She’d loved laughing and Rafael and cats. She’d died, two years ago, in battle as a Shadowhunter ought to.

Rafael nodded, a blunt yes. “I loved her. I might have wanted to live a mortal life with her. But now she’s dead and I need to stay alive for Max. We’re brothers.”

They’d been tied together since the first day they’d seen each other, united in a way that made the fact that they couldn’t be parabatai irrelevant. It had always been a heartbreak that one would outlive the other. But faced with an alternative, Alec worried.

“What if you love again?”

Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll figure out a way around it. I can’t worry about maybes, I need to make a choice now.” That was his Rafael, practical to the core, always centered in the now. And in the now Max was coming up on his thirtieth birthday, still lukewarm on the subject of romance, still his brother’s constant companion. In the now they were both worried about the future, and those worries could be solved. They could be together forever, Alec’s boys into eternity. Magnus could watch over them.

So why did the idea make Alec’s heart ache?

“I could be a vampire, like Uncle Raphael.” Rafe said, hands moving fast, a little hyperactive, like when he was younger and always moving. His accidental namesake had seemed like a happy accident when he was younger, their second child already named for Magnus’s friend, but now Alec wished he was named anything else.“That was what I planned.”

Rafe loved the sunshine, the warmth. He and Max both had such bright souls.

“It’s not an easy life.” Alec signed, and he knew the words were shaky and probably increasingly hard to decipher in the twilight. “You would leave the sun, drink blood. It’s completely different, it could hurt you!”

“Max and I will figure out a way.” Rafe promised, with the surety of man whose brother had always been behind him. Max was behind him in this too, Alec realized, even if he didn’t know it. Max would be delighted, would help his brother however he could. Max would want this.

Magnus wouldn’t. Magnus had always been hesitant to tamper with mortality. But when faced with Max and Rafael united he would crumble and help them.

Alec was the hold out.

“I don’t want to lose you.” Alec said, out loud. His voice sounded so old. He had never thought of himself as old before. “I don’t want you both to live so long without me.”

Hadn’t that always been their terrible compromise? Both he and Magnus would lose and child and keep one. Now that balance was being upset. Alec would be alone in his death.

“I don’t want Max to live without me.” Rafe signed. “You’ll have everyone else. Please, Dad. I want this.”

Rafe was asking for permission, to abandon him, to set out to do what Alec never could. Alec felt his heart in his throat and he swallowed it down like one of the vile concoctions Hodge had made them when they were young and sick.

“It’s your choice.” Alec said. “I made mine, you have to make yours. I’ll always love you.”

Rafael might have been different, might have had trouble talking and walking and sitting still, but he was still his own person. His life was his to do with as he willed. He didn’t owe Alec mortality just to balance the family scales.

It still hurt to give up what wasn’t even rightfully Alec’s. But he knew sometimes your heart could be selfish, and he wasn’t a desperate love lost boy anymore.

Rafe beamed, and his whole face lit up, like it always did. He lurched forward into Alec’s arms, like he was still a little boy and not two hundred pounds of well muscled thirty one year old toned by years of physical therapy and Shadowhunter training. Alec winced, but hugged Rafe tightly.

Fifty wasn’t old by mundane standards, but it was old for a Shadowhunter. Every hug counted.

“You’ll always be my little boy.” Alec said into his ear,. “I love you. You and Max take as long as you want. I can wait.”

Rafe heaved himself up, a little unsteady. “Max” he said roughly, and then signed, “I should talk to him. Tell him.”

Alec read the question in Rafe’s words. “Go.” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

Rafe headed inside, his joy making his gait awkward. He left Alec alone in the growing dark.


End file.
